The event flow

Flash Player 9 and later, Adobe AIR 1.0 and
later

Flash Player or AIR dispatches event objects
whenever an event occurs. If the event target is not on the display
list, Flash Player or AIR dispatches the event object directly to
the event target. For example, Flash Player dispatches the progress
event object directly to a URLStream object. If the event target
is on the display list, however, Flash Player dispatches the event
object into the display list, and the event object travels through
the display list to the event target.

The event flow describes
how an event object moves through the display list. The display
list is organized in a hierarchy that can be described as a tree.
At the top of the display list hierarchy is the Stage, which is
a special display object container that serves as the root of the
display list. The Stage is represented by the flash.display.Stage
class and can only be accessed through a display object. Every display
object has a property named stage that refers to
the Stage for that application.

When
Flash Player or AIR dispatches an event object for a display list-related event,
that event object makes a round-trip journey from the Stage to the target node.
The DOM Events Specification defines the target node as the
node representing the event target. In other words, the target node
is the display list object where the event occurred. For example,
if a user clicks on a display list object named child1,
Flash Player or AIR will dispatch an event object using child1 as
the target node.

The event flow is conceptually divided into
three parts. The first part is called the capture phase; this phase
comprises all of the nodes from the Stage to the parent of the target
node. The second part is called the target phase, which consists solely
of the target node. The third part is called the bubbling phase.
The bubbling phase comprises the nodes encountered on the return
trip from the parent of the target node back to the Stage.

The names of the phases make more sense if you conceive of the
display list as a vertical hierarchy with the Stage at the top,
as shown in the following diagram:

If a user clicks on Child1 Node, Flash Player
or AIR dispatches an event object into the event flow. As the following
image shows, the object’s journey starts at Stage,
moves down to Parent Node, then moves to Child1 Node, and then
“bubbles” back up to Stage, moving through Parent Node again
on its journey back to Stage.

In this example,
the capture phase comprises Stage and Parent Node during the
initial downward journey. The target phase comprises the time spent
at Child1 Node. The bubbling phase comprises Parent Node and Stage as they
are encountered during the upward journey back to the root node.

The event flow contributes to a more powerful event-handling
system than that previously available to ActionScript programmers.
In previous versions of ActionScript, the event flow does not exist,
which means that event listeners can be added only to the object
that generates the event. In ActionScript 3.0, you can add event
listeners not only to a target node, but also to any node along
the event flow.

The ability to add event listeners along the event flow is useful
when a user interface component comprises more than one object.
For example, a button object often contains a text object that serves
as the button’s label. Without the ability to add a listener to
the event flow, you would have to add a listener to both the button
object and the text object to ensure that you receive notification about
click events that occur anywhere on the button. The existence of
the event flow, however, allows you to place a single event listener
on the button object that handles click events that occur either
on the text object or on the areas of the button object that are
not obscured by the text object.

Not every event object, however, participates
in all three phases of the event flow. Some types of events, such
as the enterFrame and init event
types, are dispatched directly to the target node and participate
in neither the capture phase nor the bubbling phase. Other events
may target objects that are not on the display list, such as events
dispatched to an instance of the Socket class. These event objects
will also flow directly to the target object, without participating
in the capture and bubbling phases.

To find out how a particular event type behaves, you can either
check the API documentation or examine the event object's properties.
Examining the event object’s properties is described in the following
section.

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